A teenager has been left with the lungs of an 80-year-old life-long smoker after vaping for just six months.
Ewan Fisher spent weeks in intensive care after his lungs failed the night before he was due to start his GCSE exams.
The then 16-year-old needed an artificial lung to survive and spent 10 weeks in hospital as doctors fought to save his life.
Despite eventually recovering enough to go home, it has left him with the lungs of someone more than four times his age.
Doctors have blamed the issue on his vaping – something the aspiring heavyweight boxer took up to help him stop smoking so he could improve his fitness with the ambition of turning professional.
That is now a distant dream for the 19-year-old, who gets out of breath walking up the stairs and admits his 65-year-old grandfather, who has smoked for 40 years, if fitter than him.
He has also put on five stone since going into hospital and suffers with mental health issues.
Ewan, from Nottingham, said: “They tried telling me that I’d make a full recovery but it’s nearly four years on and I still really struggle. They said my lungs would make a full recovery within two years but it’s been a lot longer and I wouldn’t even say they’re at 60 per cent.
“I used to be really healthy. I used to run every night and I can’t do anything any more. When it’s hot it messes with my lungs. I’m on steroids to help them cope. I can’t run, I really struggle up hills. It’s ruined all my joints. My life’s changed massively.
“My granddad is fitter than me and he’s 65. When I was in hospital they said I had the lungs of an 80-year-old life-long smoker and I’d only vaped for five or six months.”
Ewan hit the headlines last December when horrifying pictures of him in intensive care surfaced.
Despite being under age, he said, “it was easy” to buy either cigarettes or e-cigarettes in his home city in 2017. In May that year, Ewan was finding it harder and harder to breathe.
When his lungs began failing he quickly ended up on life-support in intensive care in Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.
He was taken to Leicester and attached to an artificial lung or ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation) machine.
Ewan developed a condition called hypersensitivity pneumonitis – something he was breathing in was setting off his immune system, with catastrophic consequences.
(Image: PA)
Since leaving hospital Ewan has just finished a Level 3 BTEC in business and finance and is hoping to train as an accountant. He also travels around the country talking to school kids about the dangers of vaping.
But despite what happened to him, he says that many people still see vaping as a safe alternative to smoking.
He also believes that the sweet flavours “entice” kids to them and make them highly addictive.
(Image: PA)
He said: “The flavours are really addictive. When I went into the hospital they took my vape and I was vaping blue flush (blackberry flavour) and I had a rhubarb and custard one too.
“It’s that sort of stuff that got me addicted. Those sweet flavours are addictive and they entice young people. If you can get sweet flavorus like coca-cola it attracts young people. Every flavour is out there – even cookies and cream.”
He also believes that the high strength vapes sold in America – which contain two and a half times more nicotine than EU rules stipulate – would cause “mayhem” in the UK.
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He said: “I wasn’t even vaping the high nicotine stuff – I was 6mg of nicotine. I tried the higher ones and it was making me choke. I was about 16 and I’d just started vaping and I took a hit of my mates ones and I was choking for ages. If those high-strength vapes came over here it would cause mayhem.”
This view is backed by vape expert Jim Kang, who runs American firm vaporsolo.com.
He said: “The US’ high-strength vapes have been blamed on our public health crisis among high school kids. It’s obvious that firms are targeting kids with these sweet flavours and the UK government should do everything in its power to stop it having the same issues that we’ve sadly had to deal with in the States.”
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